17 cutting through the social media clutter

8/8/2019 17 Cutting Through the Social Media Clutter

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Cutting through the clutter:developing an approach tomeasuring social media impact

We all know social media is a hottopic, but how do we tie it to somesort o return? While 70 percent o

companies are currently using socialmedia in some way, 1 statistics showthat executives are more likely toassign employees to social mediainitiatives than budget dollars.However, 84 percent o pro essionalsusing social media report that theydo not currently measure ROI, and4 out 10 report they do not knowhow to measure social media ROI

in general.2

So while much valuablediscussion has been made aroundwhy we need to pay attention tosocial media, and how it can be usede ectively, most pro-social media

1 http://www.businessweek.com/managing/content/sep2009/ca20090911_598255.htm

2 http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1007286

arguments today are ocused toomuch on dramatizing the act thatsocial media is a game changer. The

reality is that there is currently noindustry standard or measuringsocial media ROI. People may believein the power o social media morethan ever, but it’s still hard to makethe business case or investmentbased on belie alone.

Existing methodologiesAnd yet, while there may be no industrystandard today, there are plenty o solidmethodologies that demonstrate that wedon’t need to prove a paradigm shi t in orderto establish the right way to measure theprogress o a social media strategy. The Wordo Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA),

or example, recommends measuring theshare o online voices around brands andconversational themes to determine theimpact o multiple campaigns—a critical wayto esh out core strategic principles.

WOMMA’s assertion highlights a notablebut not so obvious characteristic: Much

like a brand strategy is shaped by businessstrategy, a social media strategy shouldbe shaped by a robust discussion and cleardefnition o business goals. These goalsdi er by company and by industry. There isno one size fts all.

Another tool that can be used to fndvalue comes rom the emergence o socialmedia engagement indices. However, it isimportant to recognize that their utility isproportional to the strength o logic behindtheir rameworks.

The EngagementDB index, or example,ranks the Interbrand Best Global Brandsaccording to its own defnition o social

media engagement. The report measurestwo major criteria: depth o engagementwithin each social media channel and theactual number o social media channels inwhich the brand has a presence. The ormeris determined by a weighted average o channel-specifc sub-scores.

EngagementDB’s analysis o this revealsmany interesting conclusions. One isthat the number o channels a brandengages with exponentially increases the

by Josh Ingram



Cutting through the clutter: measuring social media Interbrand | Pg. 3

e ectiveness o its singular activities. Froma dollars and sense standpoint, this implies

that brands that invest more resources insocial media get more bang or their buck.It’s no surprise that the biggest conclusiono all in the report is a co-relation betweenfnancial per ormance and overall socialmedia engagement.

Another growing area is social mediaanalytics monitoring. Roughly valued atUS$ 1 billion, the landscape is flled withmany vendors o ering an array o use ultools, rom segmentation, to sentimentanalysis, to varying degrees o conversation

identifcation. As such, there’s limitlesspotential or fnding new ways to measurebusiness value through social media.

But while every tool claims to be moreprecise than the other – and althoughconducting analyses that account orerrors by appropriate benchmarking andcalibration is incredibly important—at theend o the day, the accuracy o each toolmatters less than our ability to ormulatethe right questions and hypotheses. Inorder or any analyses o this massively large

data set to be truly usable, it is necessary toestablish a process that tailors the researchto the business goals at hand. While it’s veryeasy to romanticize data or the sake o data,the trick is to ocus on using human—not just machine—evaluation to determinewhere there is meaning.

The right tools + the right questions =meaningful insightIn conclusion, the best way to startmeasuring social media is by engaging insimple strategic discussions. High demand

or industry standard metrics and the wide

range o tools available make analyzingsocial media an exciting and complicated

task. Yet fnding its true value is a task thatcan’t be completed in a vacuum. The need tocombine existing approaches and researchwith an open and comprehensive discussiono business and brand strategy highlightsthe need or a customized approach to asocial media strategy that is rooted in cleardefnitions o success.

Until there is an industry acceptedstandard or social media ROI, businessesmust continue to ask the right questions,

ormulate the appropriate rameworks or

evaluation, and select the right tools. Theymust derive insights rom the acts thatmatter most. ■



Creating and managingbrand value TMinterbrand.com

Josh Ingram

Josh Ingram is an Associate Consultantin Strategy at Interbrand. He has quicklydeveloped a strong oundation in BrandStrategy, carving his niche as a thoughtleader in the development o Interbrand’s

Digital and Social Media o erings, as well as acritical problem solver in the Technology andMusic/Entertainment felds.

17 cutting through the social media clutter

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